There are many known transport mechanisms for transporting plastic cards in card processing systems. Known card transport mechanisms include rollers and belts. In the case of a card processing system that includes drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet printing in a DOD printer, one known transport mechanism uses a continuous vacuum belt system where cards are fed onto a vacuum belt at a continuous feed rate with the vacuum belt then delivering the cards past the DOD printer. However, the use of a continuous vacuum belt increases the difficulty of tracking the cards due to the number of cards on the vacuum belt at any one time. Accurate and reliable tracking of the cards throughout their transport is important for many cards including financial cards such as credit and debit cards to help ensure that the correct card is ultimately issued to the correct person. In addition, a continuous vacuum belt as used in the card processing system with DOD inkjet printing can create print quality issues on the cards due to belt stretch or compression, belt tracking, belt oscillations, and belt slippage.